A couple of days ago, I read that Amazon will no longer sell its Dash buttons.
These were the physical gadgets you would stick inside your pantry or laundry room.
When you run out of Betty Crocker cake mix or Tide laundry detergent, you simply press the corresponding Dash button and… presto! An order is placed on Amazon for a restocking.
When these buttons were announced a few years ago, the Internet mocked them as stupid, ugly, and intrusive. And now, a court in Germany has declared them illegal. A few days after the ruling, Amazon announced it will stop selling Dash buttons.
The Internet seems to be celebrating, as if to say, “We told you this is a stupid idea, Amazon!”
But I think few people are thinking about the very smart underlying principle behind the Dash buttons.
The buttons themselves sold for $4.99 (they probably cost Amazon well under a dollar). And their basic function was to get you to buy more stuff from Amazon.
Did you catch the wonder of that? You pay Amazon so you can buy more stuff from Amazon.
When looked at in this way, the Dash buttons aren’t so stupid after all.
In fact, this same idea — pay us so you can buy from us — is something that smart direct marketers have been doing for decades.
In essence: you subscribe to an interesting newsletter, say Second Opinion.
The price is cheap, $20/year.
But each newsletter is in fact a more or less direct sales pitch for other products, such as supplements, where the real money is made.
Of course Amazon, which is really the biggest direct marketing company in the world, knows this well. And it even admits that the real reason the Dash buttons were axed was not the German court ruling.
Instead, Dash buttons have been replaced by Amazon’s other, more successful reordering and subscription programs. Most of which are only available — you guessed it — if you also pay for Amazon Prime.
How does this apply to you?
Well, I think the underlying principle is this:
It’s always easier to get extra sales from existing customers, than to drum up new business.
Of course, you don’t need Dash buttons to do that. You can simply write your customers emails, and make them new offers. In case you need help writing those emails, press your “Profitable email marketing” Dash button. If that doesn’t work, then you might try the following: